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If you're new to the Just A Little Further website, it's much, much more than just a blog. Take the time to look around and browse a bit. There are photos galore, lots of destinations to explore, videos to watch and articles to read. Something to keep you amused, informed and hopefully inspired.

Yesterday's post described donating our old genoa to ReSails and their efforts to turn old sails into useful items. Truth be told, I hate clutter, so I always have the urge to throw things away if I can't see an immediate use for them. David likes to keep things aboard in case we need them in the future. Experience and David's insistence have taught me that many common items have multiple uses and by saving them, we can recycle and put them to work again and, perhaps, save a few shekels along the way.

Here's a list of our most commonly recycled items on Nine of Cups and their uses:

Plastic grocery bags are kept and used as small waste basket liners.

Net veggie bags (like the ones onions come in) are used for shell and shellfish collecting.

Wine and champagne corks are used for storing needles, as well as fishing hooks and lures.

We rinse and re-use hardly used Zip-loc bags … we never know where/when we'll find them again and they really can survive several uses. We might not reuse them for food, but once rinsed, they can certainly be used for boat parts and bits.

Empty plastic laundry soap jugs with handles can be cut and used as dinghy bailers.

Plastic 1 ltr water/soda bottles w/caps can be used as beer bottles if you're into homebrew or other liquid storage. We use just the screw caps for roach cookie containers.

Glass jars and screw top lids can be re-used for canning/preserving and other food storage.

Old t-shirts become rags and polishing cloths. Never too many rags aboard! Since most of our t-shirts and clothes are purchased from thrift shops anyway, this is double and triple recycling at its best.

Old wire from lifelines can be used as snakes for cleaning thru-hulls. I also reinforce the rim on canvas buckets with old lifeline and David makes security cables for locking things up … like the dinghy and dinghy engine. We also use them as a theft deterrent when securing fuel cans on deck in dodgy ports or ashore in the dinghy.

Old sink sponges may not good enough for the galley, but they're certainly good enough for some other parts of the boat. We have a pail under the galley sink and old sponges go there to be recycled for cleaning the heads, the floors, or maybe the bilge.

Just a Little Further

We are David and Marcie Lynn and we've lived aboard our Liberty 458 cutter-rigged sailboat since 2000.

What began as an urge to travel slowly and economically at our own pace ended up an adventure of a lifetime.

Well, here we are ... nearly 90,000 miles under the keel, 5 continents, 5 Great Southern Capes, 36 countries and almost two decades later, still taking one passage at a time and going just a little further.